• by Bob Estrada , June 1, 2015

Category: Media Innovation- Existing Channel

Client: Lowe’s Home Improvement

Agency: BBDO NY, Resolution Media, OMD

Title: Lowe’s Home Improvement – Reaching Millennials with Mobile Video

Challenge: The roughly 80 million Millennials in the US are potential Lowe’s Home Improvement customers. And as more and more of them become first time homeowners, they’re learning that home improvement stores can be intimidating: filled with tens of thousands of items, many of which are only familiar to the experienced.

But as any marketer knows, Millennials are more difficult to connect with, impress, convince and entertain than any other generation before them.

So, the challenge was clear: get Millennials’ attention and to engage with Lowe’s on their terms — but in an authentic and genuine way. 

Solution:First-time homeowners often face intimidating projects that are new to them and so we wanted to help simplify the category and be relatable.

Our idea was to create snackable video “lifehacks” that provide smart, simple solutions for common issues around the home. The campaign was called #LowesFixinSix and we decided to launch it on Vine, the social video platform that features looping, six-second videos.
In an ongoing series of over 60 (really) short-form videos, Lowe’s delivered help in just six-seconds – everything from dealing with stripped screws to removing pet hair to painting tips to dealing with squirrels.

When the #LowesFixinSix campaign launched, this was a new way to use Vine. Brands were mostly using it to create one-off curiosities as they experimented on the platform. And while entertainment is a cornerstone for a lot of successful content, we knew that we could deliver value to our audience by combining entertainment + utility in these very short videos.

By focusing our attention on the Vine app, we’d connect with Millennials on a new, fast-growing social media platform. And we’d scale engagement by distributing the FixinSix videos on other social media platforms and across touch points including in-store, online video, and within TV partnerships.

Results:The #LowesFixinSix campaign is one of the most efficient and effective branded content campaigns ever created. It was shot on a smartphone, ran mostly on free media, and cost very little to produce. Yet it broke through by using an emerging short-form medium in a new way to deliver useful content to a fickle and hard-to-reach audience.

#LowesFixinSix has generated over 50 million views to date across all platforms and engagement is more than twice as high as compared with other social media content types. And engagement with Millennials is 11% higher than Non-Millennials.

By being useful, by engaging with Millennials on their terms, by offering them just the kind of content they want, FixinSix got Lowe’s a step closer to a big goal: the consideration of the audience with which its future lies.

Effie Awards are known by advertisers and agencies globally as the pre-eminent award in the marketing industry and recognize any and all forms of communication that contribute to a brand's success. Gold, silver and bronze Effie winners will be announced at the 47th annual North American Effie Awards gala on June 4 in New York.